Shoots

Hip Hop

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I’ve not been doing a lot of editing recently but I’m getting back into it now - I love editing images and I can happily spend all day doing it. I took this image 13 months ago so that’s much longer than I normally leave images before working them up. But I do like to leave a reasonable time because I think you are in a better position to assess their potential. To explain; I took 135 images of Steph and this is the only one I will use in competitions. I think I was better able to decide this was the one because any high’s and low’s of the shoot have long since faded from the memory, I’m not so emotionally attached now. I used a Pinterest board to give me inspiration - a technique I use regularly to gather lots of images I like from around the Web. I was also able to use a background from a shoot 4 years ago - an abandoned waterworks in South Yorkshire. Together with my good friend David Cudworth I had a short Urbex fascination & we got into lots of abandoned buildings. We had great fun (big kids & all that) so it’s great to also be able to use an image that has good memories. Anyway, here’s the image, with special thanks to the dancer, Steph Ovenden.

Hip Hop

The original image

The original image

A background from my short Urbex career ;-)

A background from my short Urbex career ;-)

First Shoot of the new "Water Dance" project

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Yesterday I was back in the pool for the very first shoot of a brand new project which I’m calling Water Dance. The idea is to try to create the impression of a model standing on water, using high speed flash to capture water droplets which she / he will either kick up themselves - or we might throw it at them! As with any new shoot in the pool the technicalities of the set-up gobble up shoot time. We were there for 3 hours & only got 30 minutes shoot time, but I’m used to this based on my experience of shooting the Serenity project. Here’s a little video showing you the set-up & one of the first trial images. All the flashes are battery powered so there’s no chance we’ll electrocute our model! I’ll post the development of the project, including all the highs & lows, here as I go along. I love projects as a way of focussing the mind to create a vision, but I’ll admit they always frighten me too, because after all this effort we might fail (it’s happened before). Nevertheless, it’s still really exciting to be back in the pool.

Water Dance Test Image

Platform diving shoot

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I did my third platform diving shoot at Ponds Forge last Saturday. This is the most technical shoot I’ve organised to date & involves me triggering 4 remote flashes from 70m away in the stands. I shoot at 1/2500s to freeze the water droplets so I need to use High Speed Sync for the flashes. I’m an engineer by background so if I’m honest the technical side fascinates me - I think I almost get as much pleasure from sorting out the technical issues as I do from taking the photographs! Anyway, all went well. Massive thanks to the girls & boys (& parents) of Sheffield Diving Club.

Speed Skating at Nottingham

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Had a great afternoon photographing the speed skating at Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham yesterday. It’s quite a few months since I covered any significant sporting event so it was great to get the gear out & get back on the horse so to speak. Speed skaters make great subjects - colour, shape, motion it’s all there and other than it being a bit cold you’re not at the mercy of the weather. They had most of the stadium lights on yesterday (not always the case) so the light was good too. Here’s a typical one;

Speedskating (1 of 2).jpg